The Ticket: Discover the Future of Customer Service, Support, and Experience, with Intercom

There was a time when marketing and sales paid little attention to the customer experience. That’s unthinkable today in Sydney Sloan’s universe. An early pioneer of customer marketing, Sydney knows that at the heart of every high growth business are loyal, satisfied customers. Intercom's CMO Alexandra Shapiro chats with Sydney, who recently joined SalesLoft as their first CMO, about mapping the bu...

Chatbots have opened a new way for businesses to connect with their customers and automate workflows. We gathered best practices learned from past interviews with Lili Cheng, Ericka Hall, Fergal Reid and Steli Efti to understand how organizations can best use bots alongside sales and support teams, the best ways for customers to interact with bots, and how teams can assess the ROI of using bots. S...

It’s tempting to think that all problems with business growth can be solved with a better product or a better go-to-market strategy. But as Intercom has grown, we’ve come to see the truth in what business consultant Jerry Weinberg once said: “No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem.” Intercom's cofounder Des Traynor shares the common people issues he's seen through the y...

Jake is a renown UX designer and author best known for creating the design sprint process while he was at Google. In his latest book, Make Time, Jake and his coauthor John Zeratsky explain how the powerful framework behind design sprints can be applied to our everyday work to help us take back control of our schedule and time. Intercom's Director of Brand Design Stewart Scott-Curran talks with Jak...

All's well when revenue is growing up and to the right, but what happens when the business misses a sales target? That's when sales and marketing fingerpointing takes place, and constructive partnership grinds to a halt. We brought Intercom's Director of Sales Operations, Jeff Serlin, and Director of Demand Generation, Brian Kotlyar, together to discuss what it takes to create true sales and marke...

Product-first thinking has been the north star for many teams when it comes to product development, but it comes with hidden traps as your organization grows -- especially when it comes to marketing. Brian Donohue explains the stumbling blocks that product-first teams commonly run into and the best ways for marketing and product teams to come together as one to build a product that actually gets u...

When you're starting up, your company story may be all that you've got to convince others that your product matters. At the Inside Intercom World Tour last year, our Head of Platform Partnerships, Jeff Gardner, broke down the elements of great storytelling and explained how leaders could leverage stories to figure out who to hire, shape team performance, and influence product roadmaps. See Privacy...

As your company scales, the tactics and strategy that got you from A to B aren't going to get you from B to C. GV Design Partners Kate Aronowitz and Vanessa Cho joined Intercom's Director of Brand Design Stewart Scott-Curran in the studio to discuss why design executives need to start thinking like business executives and how designers can make their contributions felt. See Privacy Policy at https...

Business growth unlocks all sorts of good things, but it also introduces increasing complexity. How can leaders manage complexity to keep it from negatively impacting their products and teams? Intercom's Director of Product Design, Emmet Connolly, explains how thinking in systems has helped him manage change effectively. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice...

When he joined Reddit, VP of Engineering Nick Caldwell's mandate was to grow the team from 35 people to 100. But he had no managers. In this episode, Nick talks with Darragh Curran, VP of Engineering at Intercom, about the hallmarks of excellent engineering leadership and the importance of preserving culture and building trust as a new leader. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Ca...

For more than 20 years, Lili Cheng has been shaping the way we chat — first with Comic Chat, a graphical IRC built into Internet Explorer in the mid ’90s and now as Microsoft’s VP of AI and Research, where she oversees the companies Bot Framework. In conversation with Intercom's Adam Risman, she explains how bots and humans complement one another, when to give your chatbot a personality, and much...

Every product manager knows the importance of running experiments. But as your company scales, managing hundreds of those experiments – and democratizing access to their learnings – becomes increasingly difficult. Claire Vo, VP of Product Management at Optimizely, shares her best practices for maintaining a culture of experimentation as you grow. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privac...

One of the hardest moments of Josh Pigford’s career came with the surprise news that his company, Baremetrics, had just six to eight weeks of runway left. In conversation with Adam Risman, he talks about how to use funding wisely to fuel company growth, the pitfalls to avoid, and the importance of cultivating a team culture that stays resilient in the face of challenges. See Privacy Policy at http...

After coaching 100+ tech leads, managers, directors, VPs, and CTOs, Jean Hsu and Edmond Lau are distilling their most valuable lessons into workshops and online courses through their company, Co Leadership. In conversation with Intercom's Louis Bennett, they explain the difference between leadership and management, the power of positive feedback, and why trust is the foundation of the most effecti...

Elad Gil has seen hyper growth from all angles. During his time at Google and Twitter, both companies grew headcount by 10x or more. He's also invested in and advised Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart, Square and Stripe, and has published a new book, the High Growth Handbook. In conversation with Intercom's Adam Risman, he breaks down some of the toughest challenges that come with hyper growth – and his...

Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital and former Chief Storyteller at Box, explains how craft a narrative that compels buyers into action, the three stories every salesperson needs to know, how to fix your pitch deck, and more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Meaningful growth is about connecting more people to the value of your product, so they become loyal, long-term, paying customers, who share it with others. Pulled from some of our favorite growth-focused conversations to date, Andrew Chen, Shaun Clowes, Casey Winters, Gina Gotthilf, Sean Ellis and Brian Rothenberg share their best practices. Interested in getting more growth lessons? Grab a...

As CEO at Sales Hacker and a former sales leader at Udemy, Max Altschuler believes the best sales teams are those who can do more with less. So what makes a more efficient sales team? Max shares the strategies and processes he's used to grow his companies, tips for hiring better performing salespeople, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at...

Startup advisor and author of "Build Better Products" Laura Klein joins Intercom's Adam Risman to share what product teams can learn from heist movies, how to align business goals with user needs, collaboration tips, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

From finding a North Star Metric to experimenting across the full customer journey, Sean Ellis, founder and CEO at GrowthHackers and Dropbox's first marketer, shares his formula for creating sustainable, long-term growth in a business. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Close.io CEO Steli Efti believes the key to success in sales is qualifying leads well. That means selling only to prospects you truly believe you can help, and in conversation with Intercom's Adam Risman, Steli shares the do’s and don’ts of that determination process.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-inf...

As the Head of Growth Marketing at Clearbit, a company that surfaces data to helps sales and marketing teams fuel growth, Matt Sornson knows data-driven growth inside and out. In conversation with Intercom's Adam Risman, he explains the mistakes he sees marketers making most often with data, the strategy behind his team's long-form content marketing efforts, and more. See Privacy Policy at https:/...

Bob Moesta, President and CEO of The Re-Wired Group and a pioneer of the Jobs-to-be-Done framework, has helped develop more than 3,500 products and services. Intercom co-founder Des Traynor welcomes him back to the podcast to talk about how we can continue getting better at unpacking customer motivations. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art1...

What do Dropbox, Uber, AngelList, Front, Gusto and Boba Guys have in common? All have benefited from the sage advice of growth expert Andrew Chen. Now a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Andrew shares his latest thinking on viral growth, user acquisition, "The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs" and more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19...

Rohini Pandhi has been a product manager at early-stage startups all the way up to publicly traded companies. Now a Product Lead at Square, Rohini sits down with Intercom Senior Product Manager Michelle Fitzpatrick to share her tips for staying close to customers, parsing feedback and prioritization at scale. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://...